New Orleans

Louisiana, U.S.A. – Wednesday, June 7th, 2023

The sensible route for this trip would have been to make Alabama the furthest southwest destination, going from Birmingham to Montgomery before working our way east and back north through Georgia and beyond. But I had some flexibility left in the two week schedule and, feeling it wasn’t a proper southern road trip without reaching the Gulf Coast, decided to add New Orleans. The only way to make this work was to break up the Alabama leg with a nearly five hour detour deeper south. But it would be well worth the effort.

I first visited New Orleans in March 2018 and loved it. It was special because it always felt like one of the most distant places I could find in the continental U.S., both culturally and, being from Northern Michigan and relocating to California, geographically. So when it seemed feasible on this road trip to include a full day to return to the Big Easy, even in the much steamier month of June, I had to take the opportunity.

In 2018 we spent most of our three days near the French Quarter, visiting museums like the National World War II Museum (huge!), the Historic Voodoo Museum (tiny!), the New Orleans Jazz Museum (eh, they deserve better!), and my surprise favorite, the Pharmacy Museum, filled floor to ceiling with cabinets of antique bottles and vials in a historic French Quarter building. We also toured the Garden District and Lafayette Cemetery, and took a Ghost Tour led by an old high school friend of mine. We managed to get tickets to an immersive theater performance called The Stranger Disease charting the progression and paranoia of the yellow fever epidemic in a 19th century New Orleans household; a strangely premonitory experience given the state of the world just two years later. I also made time for New Orleans City Park and its Lady Bug Zierer Coaster in the Carousel Gardens amusement area, so I had already claimed the city’s lone coaster credit and would not need to be bothered for our stop in 2023.¹

This one day visit was both to check off a few remaining things on the “must do” list we ultimately didn’t do the first time around, as well as return to a couple of our favorite bars and music venues. But since we also had our own car this time, it opened the door to some additional experiences that were a little farther outside city limits. We got in late the night before and parked in a city surface lot directly adjacent to our hotel in the French Quarter. We were warned that break-ins were common, but it was too late to deal with finding the (more expensive) enclosed lot several blocks away so we opted to risk it.

Fortunately there was no issue the next morning. We began with a short walk past Jackson Square at the center of the French Quarter.

Opposite Jackson Square is the famed Cafe Du Monde, known for their beignets and chicory coffee since 1862. They’re so famous you can even buy the beignet mix at Disneyland, and unfortunately that fame can also lead to very long lines. This was one of those “must dos” we didn’t do last time due to the long wait. Fortunately the queue was much more manageable on a weekday forecast to crack 90°F, and we were ordered and seated quite efficiently. Cafe Du Monde is built for the crowds, with a massive covered seating area that can get a bit chaotic but also adds to the atmosphere with live music playing. (There’s always live music nearby somewhere in the French Quarter.) The beignets were perfectly fluffy, piled high with mounds of powdered sugar that you had to be careful to neither inhale nor exhale suddenly while near or in your mouth. One plate serves three beignets, an odd number that suggests it’s better to each order your own.

We also made a quick stop at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, run by the National Park Service. This is not anything like a typical National Park. Music being an abstract, ephemeral thing, technically the historical park is represented by the entire city of New Orleans, although the actual federally-run National Park property consists of a visitor center and a concert hall several blocks away.²

The visitor center was tiny and sleepy; the rangers almost seemed surprised to receive visitors, despite being located near the heart of the French Quarter usually teeming with tourists. The concert hall was not performing that day, and besides we already had other musical plans. We did a quick tour of the interpretive displays, admired the hand-painted piano, and then made our way back to the hotel.

The unaffiliated New Orleans Jazz Museum is a better destination for jazzheads, but really the city deserves a much bigger and better showcase for its most influential (and increasingly endangered) cultural product.

Had Dixie Landin’s rides been operational I originally would have planned a drive up to Baton Rouge for a quick coaster run in Louisiana’s largest remaining amusement park. But as that was not the case (and truthfully I didn’t miss it) the afternoon ended up being reserved for a tour of the Whitney Plantation, located some 50 minute drive along the Mississippi River from the French Quarter.

You can find many plantation tours throughout the South, even just down the same road as the Whitney Plantation. What sets the Whitney apart, somewhat shockingly, is that it’s the first (and I believe still only) historical plantation whose mission since 2014 is to educate the public about the history and legacy of slavery in the United States. Not as a thematic subsection when you get to the less glamorous worker’s quarters, not as an apologetic aside by a tour guide when confronted with the question of how the house was maintained so beautifully, and certainly not as a backdrop for prom photos and weddings. Here, the entire historic plantation property is understood and interpreted as part of a historic network of slave labor camps where immutable trauma and tragedy took place. Which, if anyone with an understanding of American history should know, is really how all historic plantations should be preserved and presented. But such is not the world we find ourselves in. When I heard about the Whitney Plantation some years prior, I knew I had to someday experience it for myself.

There’s a small museum area in the visitor center while waiting for the scheduled tour to start. It serves as an introduction to the international slave trade, the methods of oppression, and even attempts to fight it.

The guided tour begins at the Antioch Baptist Church. This church was not originally part of the property, but was built after the Civil War by freedmen in a nearby village, and later donated and relocated to the Whitney Plantation. I appreciated starting the tour in a place of reflection that also represents one of the last, more hopeful chapters of the story before traveling backwards into the more challenging history. (It may be of anecdotal interest that our tour group was almost entirely white, including our guide.)

The Wall of Honor is the next stop, dedicated to over 350 people who were enslaved on the plantation between 1752 and 1865.

The main part of the tour explores the living and working quarters of the enslaved people on the sugar plantation, explaining the grueling daily process to make sugar. (Cotton, the most common plantation crop to use enslaved labor during this era, was not as suitable for growth in this area. Both were difficult crops for the workers in their own ways.)

The tour then ends at the main plantation house, which is where many other historic plantation tours will begin. We entered through the back door into the kitchen, as the people who worked there would have done. The house is mostly empty save for a few antique pieces, in a condition that’s preserved but not fully restored. It’s a testament to the labor of those who built, ran, and maintained it while avoiding the glorification of the antebellum slaveowners who resided there.

There is a long list of potential Civil Rights Tour destinations across the South that any road trip should include at least a few of, even for those on a predominantly roller coasting tour. If your route includes driving between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the Whitney Plantation is a must-stop, but even if you’re just staying in one city or the other and have the means to get out a bit further, I still highly recommend the journey. It’s a sobering reminder of the material conditions that have created the world we live in today, and the human toll extracted that is too often rendered invisible by the demands of capital. We carry a part of that legacy with us whenever we enjoy the luxuries of modern life, whether dining at a cafe, driving across statelines, or riding a roller coaster.

Back in New Orleans, the LaBranche House is one of the most photographed buildings emblematic of the French Quarter architectural style (which is actually of a later-era Spanish origin, not too dissimilar from what one would find in Madrid).

Nearby was our first musical performance stop of the day at Preservation Hall, one of the last remaining “must-dos” that I missed on the first time through. If you want to hear some traditional New Orleans style jazz, Preservation Hall is the place to go, supporting the preservation of an increasingly rare musical form. One thing I wasn’t expecting was just how tiny it was; the front door is easy to miss and the performance hall itself is just a fairly small room inside the old building once used as an art gallery.

We paid a few dollars extra to guarantee a seat on the front row bench, which I’m glad we did as we got very close to the musicians while avoiding the claustrophobia of the tightly arranged benches behind us. The musicians were the oldest of old school, with an easy rapport and calm confidence of players who have been honing their craft for decades. It was great to be treated to a performance preserving and celebrating jazz’s origins in New Orleans, although to be honest, the jumpy, jangly style of traditional New Orleans jazz (exemplified by songs like “When the Saints Go Marching In”) isn’t something I would find myself playing at home or seeking outside of New Orleans.

While leaving Preservation Hall, we got caught in an afternoon rainstorm and, getting hungry anyway, found it the perfect time to duck into the Napoleon House for an early dinner. The building is named as it was intended as a refuge for the Emperor of France upon his exile, but he never made it. It’s been a restaurant for the last 100+ years, where among its specialties are the Pimm’s Cup cocktail. We also got the jambalaya, andouille sausage, and a warm muffuletta sandwich to share. Food in New Orleans is always fantastic, although you’ll see a lot of the cajun standards repeated across restaurant menus around the city. With such a strong history and so much of the economy dependent on tourists, it can be hard for chefs and restaurateurs in New Orleans to deviate much from the long-established formulas.

For a taste of something a bit more modern, once the rains cleared we headed out two miles from the French Quarter to our favorite spot from our 2018 visit: Bacchanal Fine Wine & Spirits. Situated in a big old house along the Mississippi, this wine bar includes an outdoor patio with live music nightly. Pick out a bottle from the racks in the front store and then grab some glasses and a table out back and enjoy. This evening’s performance was much more along the lines of a modern jazz fusion group, a considerable contrast from what we’d heard at Preservation Hall, or anywhere else within the French Quarter proper. We spent a couple hours hanging out under the tree canopy as the band played through their sets and the skies grew dark. While I always try to find new experiences, you know you’ve connected with a city when you also have that one place you always have to return to whenever you visit, and for New Orleans that’s become Bacchanal for us. I expect I’ll be back at least a third time someday.

Originally the plan was to call it a night after Bacchanal, but as it was only a little after 9:00pm when the band wrapped their performance and we didn’t know when the next time we’d be back in New Orleans, we opted to make a detour to one of our other favorite spots from the last time, the Spotted Cat Music Club along Frenchmen Street. Outwardly it’s a bit of a dive bar. But with some of the best music in the city in a tight, mostly standing-room venue, it’s always a very lively spot to visit. The group playing this night had a bit of a good ol’ boy party vibe as we walked in. It didn’t seem quite like our style, so we grabbed a beer and figured we’d move on as soon as we finished. But they pretty quickly showed they had strong chops, a raucous command of the crowds, and plenty of energy to burn, making for an infectiously fun performance that quickly won us over. We ended up staying for over an hour (and a couple more rounds of drinks) to the close of the night.

Frenchmen Street borders the eastern edge of the French Quarter, and in addition to a number of bars and music clubs, on this night there was also an outdoor art fair going on. We ended up wandering back to our hotel around 11:00pm, tired and a bit drunk, but very satisfied with a day that gave us a little bit of everything New Orleans has to offer, including three very different yet complementary musical experiences. We went to bed in the hazy glow of what we knew would be one of the high points of the trip.

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